Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

Is this another one of those cases like in Congo where people think it was Belgians doing the hand chopping but instead it was natives doing it to other natives and the Europeans thinking the whole thing was a big mess
Native American historical accounts were mostly (literally) burned down when yurops came, hardly any survived and nearly all of which did survive were accounts by yuropean priests and conquerors.

It is also the reason why hardly anything is known about their religions, that was the first thing that got thrown to the pyre and the yurops really sought to eliminate with the most fervor.

That is to say, who the fuck knows for sure.
 
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Is this another one of those cases like in Congo where people think it was Belgians doing the hand chopping but instead it was natives doing it to other natives and the Europeans thinking the whole thing was a big mess
The history of the Aztecs in particular was very brutal. They would raise young boys I think until the age of 10 to be human sacrifices to their sun god, and they would rip out their hearts on their pyramid altar. They also would do the same to captured enemies. In fact, they would go out of their way to capture their enemies rather than kill them so they could paint their pyramid red with their blood.
 
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The history of the Aztecs in particular was very brutal. They would raise young boys I think until the age of 10 to be human sacrifices to their sun god, and they would rip out their hearts on their pyramid altar. They also would do the same to captured enemies. In fact, they would go out of their way to capture their enemies rather than kill them so they could paint their pyramid red with their blood.
I need more dark shit like this in the game. A lot of nations and cultures had horrific origins or practices back in the day. Like, sure, the whole dead babies thing for Mamook was dark, but it's not like they were eating them or sacrificing them. They even went out of their way to build a cenotaph for them.

I want something dark. Something that would make my stomach turn.
 
I need more dark shit like this in the game. A lot of nations and cultures had horrific origins or practices back in the day. Like, sure, the whole dead babies thing for Mamook was dark, but it's not like they were eating them or sacrificing them. They even went out of their way to build a cenotaph for them.

I want something dark. Something that would make my stomach turn.
I mentioned it before but it still pisses me off that out of the last six cities we've gotten, five of them have been happy, peaceful, progressive societies (all six if you only count Eulmore after Vauthry is ousted). It's not just the lack of dark or disturbing lore but the lack of cynicism as well.
 
I mentioned it before but it still pisses me off that out of the last six cities we've gotten, five of them have been happy, peaceful, progressive societies (all six if you only count Eulmore after Vauthry is ousted). It's not just the lack of dark or disturbing lore but the lack of cynicism as well.
Yeah I hate how there’s nothing interesting in this game anymore as far as civilizations go. Eulmore hooked me hard with shadowbringers. (It’s one of the reasons it’s my favorite expansion) Vauthry as a character was so vile and disgusting that I would be eager to see the next scene with him in it. We can’t have anything truly dark anymore and I have a feeling the fanbase is a big part of it.
 
Not to mention Eulmore had all the fucked up shit like feeding people ground up sin eater flesh to turn them into sin eaters themselves under the guise of charity, people getting tossed to their deaths when they outlive their usefulness (that quest with the singer girl trying to hide that she can’t sing anymore still haunts me,) Vauthry’s parents being totally ok with Emet messing up their unborn child so they could have more power in the city, etc. And even when Vauthry gets killed Alphinaud tears into the entire populace that they weren’t victims and were just as accountable for Eulmore’s horrors as their leader. Then we get Chai being elected and him going around outside to learn about the plight of others where people don’t immediately trust him and he gets the truth bomb about how awful everything was to anyone who was poor and unable to live in luxury.

Hell even Garelmald in EW didn’t sugarcoat things. Propaganda brain washing, citizens refusing help from you, and two kids who would rather die in the snow than receive aid from the Alliance. One NPC calls you out for killing their friends in Prae. And let’s not forget Quintus blowing his head off with a gun which makes the rubber bullets in DT even dumber.
 
The 7.1 quests, in sum total, make me ask that old, familiar question: who is this for? The amount of stock reverb plugins being applied to any scene in Solution 9... and then Sphene just doesn't have the same effect applied? I'm sitting there thinking 'is this intentional, or was this an oversight?' Galool Ja and his mother are the same voice actor, and I'm just not supposed to notice for some reason? Koanna is the newly-minted ruler of a nation that just underwent a big attack (though I guess there really have been no long-term consequences that anyone cares about), but he's going to risk dying... to save an animal of prey? from a predator? Why? Oh, and he's replete with daddy issues because he thought his parents abandoned him to... chase the buffalo? What does that even mean? Oh, and Zoraal is getting some posthumous development, as also having daddy issues. I think Hiroi has daddy issues. At the very least he continues his trend of "wouldn't that be cool? let's do that!" and not thinking it through, introducing a nonstop deluge of things that just get fucking forgotten about in the very next scene.

I remain floored that any of this made it through their process. Do they even have a process? I really have to wonder. I don't think I'll be coming back at any point in this expansion again. Sure, the Alliance Raid was fun. Sure, BLM getting a second leyline and Despair becoming instant as a band-aid fix to how they fucked the class for no reason is nice. But who cares? I have no faith in this team to correct-course narratively, because nothing short of sacking Hiroi could salvage this poisoned well - and Japan doesn't do that. The developers don't give a shit about their world or making anything in it compelling, and there's plenty of other fun games without troon-infested playerbases or monthly fees. Maybe if Bozja 2 is supposed to be solid, I guess.
I've worked with more than a few studios where talent patches in and was just speculating because reddit had been touting Sena's 'ability' as a director and how they have a 'professional setup' in their home.

I wouldn't have been surprised if he convinced his SE handlers that he knew what he was doing, which is why shit came out so wack.
It could be that he was recording his own lines and applying the weirdass compression himself, and the end-studio didn't even bother to fix it up. I remember weird compression and mastering choices all throughout the MSQ. It would surprise me that the studio thought turning in something like that was acceptable, but then again - I don't know. Given everything else, maybe it is par for the course.
It's funny how Endwalker has a literal Indian island to do and only like 1/6 expac to cover it and somehow that was more genuine and less offensive compared to the "hola y latinx, I like tacos" the whole of Dawntrail shaped up to be.
Well, and it doesn't do a great job of presenting broader India and all of that subcontinent's absolutely-absurd history... but it doesn't need to. It's a mercantile state ruled by a shy dragon which has world-renowned alchemy: the Indian culture gets sprinkled on like a garnish, with the architecture and colors and patterns and diwali shit. Meanwhile, Tural is supposed to be a fantasy-state first and foremost... but nothing there makes sense. There's so much I could go into with why this Empire makes zero fucking sense, but who cares? I'd be thinking about it so much more than Hiroi did.
 
Meanwhile, Tural is supposed to be a fantasy-state first and foremost... but nothing there makes sense. There's so much I could go into with why this Empire makes zero fucking sense, but who cares? I'd be thinking about it so much more than Hiroi did.
Yeah tbh the OG writers who wrote an entire bible on the world of Eorzea (the early interviews showcasing FFXIV made a lot of hay from this factoid) and even invented a fucking language just for dragonspeak are probably all long gone at this point.
 
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Yeah tbh the OG writers who wrote an entire bible on the world of Eorzea (the early interviews showcasing FFXIV made a lot of hay from this factoid) and even invented a fucking language just for dragonspeak are probably all long gone at this point.
The big cheese of ARR and HW was Maehiro, with Ishikawa and Oda getting high billing as well. Oda takes over for Stormblood, and I believe that's when Hiroi starts to get credited as well - I'd have to look at the credits sequences to remember when-exactly all that happened.

The reality plain to me, honestly, is that Ishikawa did not really give a shit about Eorzea, didn't care about the setting that much, and just wanted to tell her own particular story. All the stuff about the Ascians and the Ancients don't really tie back into Maehiro's world. Shadowbringers was great in part because it was a soft reboot - but it's worth remembering that it completely side-tracked the main story and the main world arriving at the obvious climax the first three games had been working up towards.

For all his faults, Oda's Stormblood still feels like it has elaborate and ornate world cultures, with the whole Hingashi section recalled fondly in my mind. The Crystarium is great in SHB, but Radz-at-Han and Sharlayan both in EW feel a little reductive and simplistic. I just don't think culture and great-power-dynamics are Ishikawa's interests, but you at least have her strong character moments to fall back on.

With Hiroi, it's like... were there really only 3 competent writers? Were they holding up all of the load-bearing work? (If you've ever worked corporate, you know the answer is: absolutely yes.) It's embarrasing how little he regards the rest of the world, how little sense his own story makes, how the 'nation' of Tural is a complete mess that feels totally disjointed and pointless, and how the tone just continues to be so ridiculously juvenile.
 
To be fair Yoshi P had no actual story or plans for the Ascians and Ancients prior to SHB from what I’ve been informed. They were just generic bad guys back then. In fact I feel like biggest issue with the entire msq structure was Yoshi P just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks in the earlier years. This left a lot of work for the other writers to solidify plot points and it shows with how much SHB and EW needed to detour the main plot to flesh out the Ascians and ancients. Not to mention during Maehiro’s era we had the Ascians up our asses causing problems since the very beginning. Many conflicts early on involved them causing shit behind the scenes. In fact the Ascians literally predate even Yoshi P’s involvement in the game as they appear on the very beginning of 1.0’s story.

As for Oda he‘s good at worldbuilding and lore but absolutely awful with characters as the Ala mhigo sections of Stormblood show.

Ishikawa- best at dialogue and characters. Oda- best at lore/worldbuilding. Hiroi? Can’t find anything good about his writing style unlike the others who had strengths to cover their weaknesses. If I had to give him something it would be writing Pandaemonium and taking Lahabrea, the biggest joke of an Ascian prior to EW, and giving him an actual character and plot. And even that raid series suffers from his signature daddy issues. Hiroi’s writing also gives me major fudanshi (male fujo) vibes for some reason.
 
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God help me, I bit the bullet.

Because I made sure to give my running commentary to my friends while I subjected myself to this utter travesty of a story, let me run down my thoughts here.

First, TACOS. The TACOS were much worse than some of you were saying. Nobody would shut the fuck up about TACOS right out of the gate. Literally the NPC that gives us our first quest, not even two lines of dialog in? "I see you want to experience Tuliyollal at a more leisurely pace. WHY DON'T YOU GO GRAB SOME TACOS FROM B'RUK EVU'S PLACE? LET ME EXPLAIN TO YOU WHO B'RUK EVU IS EVEN THOUGH YOU'VE BEEN TO HIS PLACE MULTIPLE TIMES ALREADY. ALSO TACOS. YOU'RE GONNA LOVE THE TACOS. TACOS. TACOS." Random bumfuck migrant talking to his dad we hear in the business? First rattle out of the dad is "HAHA, YOU STILL LOVE TACOS, DON'T YOU ME BOY?". Wuk Lamat injects her presence into our TACO dining session? "BOY I SURE DO LOVE TACOS."

Not even fucking Thavnair was this bad with how it presented curry as a regional food. But apparently cultural diversity means TACOS, I guess.

Second, the funeral ceremony for Sphene. We overhear random kid crying to his equally crybaby mom about missing Sphene and not wanting to live with the memory of Sphene having died if it's just going to be a constant reminder that she's dead and gone. Wuk Lamat responds with a completely halfassed attempt at trying to help people who have never had to deal with grief before deal with grief, immediately gets pushback, shrugs, walks away, then comes up to us and basically goes "Welp, they're all as retarded as I thought they were. I hope they just get over it eventually."

And what's the MOST fucking asinine about this moment isn't Wuk Lamat's total autism, because I can expect that much even if it is a bit egregious all things considered, but the fact that we have fucking Alphinaud, Alisaie, G'raha Tia, and Krile present when this happens. Three out of four of these people were with us every step of the way of Endwalker. One of these four people had a firsthand account of everything we all experienced throughout Endwalker. We have four, no, FIVE qualified people here (counting ourselves) who know DAMN well by this point how to confront overwhelming despair and move on past it. We practically inspired the whole fucking star to that much. A couple of them even fucking repeated the lessons of Endwalker here and there during MSQ of Dawntrail.

And yet SOMEHOW. Inexplicably. The people most qualified for getting people to pull their heads out of their asses with this sort thing all collectively shrug their shoulders and go "Sucks. We dunno what to do either."

The fucking Leveilleur twins, who are usually the FIRST to be outspoken about this sort of thing, are dead fucking silent in the face of this. And you know what? You cannot use "Well, it's not our place to talk since we took their queen from them" as an excuse considering ALL of fucking GARLEMALD, and ESPECIALLY how you've had these two kids practically spearhead Garlemald recovery efforts. What in the fuck happened to "Refraining from helping someone you have the means to help is not wisdom, it is indolence"?

Third, the new dungeon. It is the only thing I liked about this patch so far. I like the whole "modern high-tech zombie outbreak" aesthetic everything has midway in and I'm absolutely certain people are going to Dungeon Explore that one in particular for gposing. It's neat. The final boss fight was also neat.

HOWEVER, and I didn't really think about this until after the fact, but it's kinda completely fucked up that we just dragged a small child who, only a short while before, had absolutely no concept of death or dying, through a bloodstained facility that probably reeked of death, shit, and rot, put down practical zombies right in front of him, and essentially subjected him to even more horrors he can scarcely comprehend. And it's even MORE fucked up that the attitude from EVERYBODY in light of this is just "Yeah, this is fine. All of this is perfectly fine. Just another day in the life, huh? It's all okay because we're gonna find out about the baby boy's momma here! Yay!". Like, we didn't HAVE to drag him along with us through all of that. And yet we did. Against all sane judgment, we did.

Fourth, OUR FILLER ARC.

Sub-topic: Why is Hiroi so goddamned obsessed with animal feces in this expansion? All the minor flavor quest dialog that most people are gonna skip over is just filled with "We eat, breathe, LIVE in animal shit. Animal shit is key to EVERYTHING in our lives. Animal shit is ALL." It was funny, yet questionable before, but now we have the Native American cat people straight up saying "Yeah, we use buffalo shit for medicine, medicinal patches, soap, fuel/kindling for fires, AND we season our food with it!".

Main topic: Everything about this filler arc was retarded. Okay, so Koana was actually born hhetsarro, got abandoned by his parents, and now has to basically embrace his heritage in order to solve the problem of the buffalo migrating onto where the train tracks are. Now, if anyone else recalls, we get three primary conditions/complicating factors laid out to us in the duration of this whole setup.

1: We can't run the trains as is anyway because the sound of the train and the rumbling of the earth as it moves along spooks the buffalo and will most likely disrupt their migratory patterns, thus driving them into a frenzy.
2. Koana COULD make a quieter train, but then we run the risk of the buffalo stepping onto tracks and getting run over. We also can't just blow the whistle to ward them away because the buffalos are easily spooked and this could also disrupt them.
3. We establish that a giant fuckoff dinosaur is the thing driving the buffalo away from their food source and making this a problem in the first place. Ergo, it's very presence, and the aetherial signature it puts out, is disruptive to the buffalo.

Okay, Koana stupidly throws himself into the giant fuckoff dinosaur and gets yeeted in order to protect a tiny buffalo, but survives because PLOT said so. That's stupid. Whatever.

What's fucking ridiculous here is, after defeating the giant fuckoff dinosaur, Erenville – who should be the SMARTEST motherfucker in the room in most given situations – just straight up proposes, "Why don't we use the giant fuckoff dinosaur's scales, imbue it with the aether of the giant fuckoff dinosaur, and basically set it up as a silent whistle to ward the buffalo away from the train tracks without disturbing them?"

How in the fuck does that make sense? Why would the prey species, upon sensing what they THINK is the presence of their apex predator, just arbitrarily treat it as a minor thing to casually displace themselves away from instead of naturally getting panicked into a frenzy over the fact that "OH SHIT THE APEX PREDATOR IS NEARBY"?

But okay, okay. For the sake of argument, and since we're already doing this nonsensical thing anyway, surely AT THE VERY LEAST, we can sound the "whistle" well in advance to make sure we KEEP the buffalo off the track while the train is in operation, right?

Nah. We're gonna get smack dab right on a buffalo on the tracks and sound the whistle. And, because the plot needs it to happen, the buffalo will just calmly shuffle off the tracks, and hey! It doesn't even disturb a pack of buffalo that are RIGHT fucking near the tracks either! Why? Because It Just Works ™️ . We have invented a Todd Howard whistle. Congratulations.

Small nitpick: It bugs me that we have that brief moment afterwards of Erenville talking about carrying his mom's wishes with him, while we have the camera specifically pan to show that he has a keychain of the robot body his mom used hanging off his backpack, which MORE THAN SPEAKS FOR ITSELF, and YET, we still have Wuk Lamat chiming in anyway to point out "BRO, YOU HAVE A KEYCHAIN OF YOUR DEAD MOM ON YOUR BAG! HERE YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT YOUR DEAD MOM AND YOU'RE CARRYING A KEYCHAIN OF YOUR DEAD MOM!". Like we couldn't just have the emphasis on the visual speak for itself.

Fifth: Lol. Lmao. Unironically had Gulool Ja's mom be an ULTRA simp, go "I can fix him" with Zoraal Ja, and then threw her baby into a river like fucking Moses when that clearly didn't work out. I feel for the kid and how broken he is by this information, but... God. I must be a horrible person because I laughed during that whole scene. Especially when Zoraal Ja had his fucking "THAT BABY AIN'T MINE" spergout. Absolute insanity. What the fuck kind of story are they even trying to tell here?

Last: Our "Tale of Two Sphenes". I'm calling it now. It's more Ascian bullshit. Hiroi and Yoshida don't know how to move the story forward on its own, so we're doing Ascian bullshit YET AGAIN. Every bit of this setup absolutely reeks of previous Ascian bullshit. We know Yoshida's said there's still Ascians out there and he played at being a coy fuck about their involvement in the story going forward. We're back to Ascian bullshit.

I'll do the raid and Beast Tribe shit later. But man. All of this is just lazy and stupid.
 
Unironically had Gulool Ja's mom be an ULTRA simp, go "I can fix him" with Zoraal Ja, and then threw her baby into a river like fucking Moses when that clearly didn't work out. I feel for the kid and how broken he is by this information, but... God. I must be a horrible person because I laughed during that whole scene. Especially when Zoraal Ja had his fucking "THAT BABY AIN'T MINE" spergout.
Mamool Ja are niggers confirmed, thanks Hiroi

I stopped playing 7.1 immediately after the first dungeon, figured there was nothing of value beyond that point. Glad to know I wasn't wrong.
 
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Main topic: Everything about this filler arc was retarded. Okay, so Koana was actually born hhetsarro, got abandoned by his parents, and now has to basically embrace his heritage in order to solve the problem of the buffalo migrating onto where the train tracks are. Now, if anyone else recalls, we get three primary conditions/complicating factors laid out to us in the duration of this whole setup.

Or they could just construct an elevated track in combination with the quieter train, to allow the buffalo to move around as needed.

Y'know, like has been done in the real world and discovered with about 10 seconds of googling.

This heckin' respectful of other cultures shit is getting out of fucking hand.

Still haven't touched MSQ/the game outside of a few FL matches. The new netcode still feels really bad.
 
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Hiroi’s writing also gives me major fudanshi (male fujo) vibes for some reason.
I almost burst out laughing when Teeshal Ja was fawning over Zoraal Ja when he was training at the palace and she was standing over the corner. We have reached absolute shovelware anime tier writing. But they managed to only zoom in on Wuk Lamat clenching her first once so silver linings.

like has been done in the real world
There were elevated/suspended tracks in SHB, in the desert area, and in DT, in Heritage Found, so it's not like its a foreign concept here either.
 
Sphene somehow took a PHYSICAL DEVICE (Azem's Cum Chalice of Shard Travelling) into a VIRTUAL REALITY.

This PHYSICAL DEVICE somehow still functioned in this virtual space

And in this virtual space, Sphene managed to activate said virtual device and open up rifts to other (very much real and physical) worlds.......from within this virtual reality............and somehow, SOMEHOW, she was going to PHYSICALLY INVADE these other REAL PHYSICAL WORLDS.........not only without any army.........but with only her virtual avatar.
I mean, she still has an army of the Squid Game Drones. and the Queen Eternal may have a physical equivalent; even if it technically doesn't, living memory's hard light constructs still can do things (though that's more Augmented Reality rather than virtual reality).

I'm more surprised that alexandria didn't get bodied before this, honestly. Even with those concessions, there has to be monsters out there that can snap those drones like twigs.
 
There were elevated/suspended tracks in SHB, in the desert area, and in DT, in Heritage Found, so it's not like its a foreign concept here either.

I viewed those as more engineering/construction issues vs. 'we must heckin' respect the buffalo's culture, guise!' but yeah.

It's such a stupid thing to be hung up on but there's a similar plot beat in Endwalker. I can't 100% remember all the details, but there was some big Garlemald generator or reactor or whatever and there were literally only 2 people in the entire world who knew how to get in and operate it. Pretty convoluted but the rest of the story beats didn't take me out of it like Dawntrail does on a continual basis.

I can excuse some dumb or nonsensical plot points if the story itself is entertaining enough.
 
I thought Gulool Ja's mother being a stalker and Zoraal Ja chimping out was fine. Gulool Ja is probably the only thing I care about to come out of this expac, even if he's a minor part. Every character in 7.0 acts like an intellectually stunted child, being either completely predictable or pants-on-head retarded, but at least lil bro has an excuse.

I just can't care about Zoraal Ja at all at this point. The fact that Krile explicitly pointed out at the start of 7.0 how psychotic he is ruined any chance of sympathising when he turns out to be a villain. I don't need a grand arc but consider that his entire personality revolves around his resentment of his father, but we didn't get a single conversation between the two until he murdered him, and Gulool Ja Ja (loving dad, career diplomat) apparently just handwaved his trueborn son's open warmongering away with the same "my children have much to learn" BS he applies to Wuk Lamat and Koana.

Zoraal Ja reminds me of Vauthry: narcissistic, obsessive, tyrannical, transforms into a twisted realisation of his fixations for the penultimate bossfight. But Vauthry was at least established as a dumb puppet with impotent bitchfits whereas Zoraal Ja is supposed to be seen as the major threat for most of the expansion. And while Vauthry had a horde of genuinely scary abominations that had almost destroyed the world and the capacity to brainwash a city, Zoraal Ja has... remote control drones. Which lose in a gunfight against cowboys shooting rubber bullets. They even outright shit on the mechanical soldiers as weaker than the experiments in the latest dungeon. What's the point in a villain that's neither threatening or sympathetic?

E: also that solo duty was gay as fuck. "Oh no we can't get past this boss's defences! thank god we have a machinist to shoot at its weakpoint!" said noone ever. Cope and greed Machinists, you will never be a melee dps.
 
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